The Young and The Restless | Desire becomes art

By Bree Harding

Dec 30, 2024

In one room, a sign invited me to draw an interpretation of my private parts on to a printed template of a body and then throw the artwork into a bathtub half-filled with strangers’ self-portraits of their own.

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In another room, I learned about the journey of pubic hair in the way a fashion historian would deliver details after delving into diverse hairstyles throughout the decades.

Subjects that are taboo in many everyday conversations were openly inspected in the name of history at the museum. Photo by Bree Harding

In yet another, I could, if I’d wanted to, enter a photo booth and take a risqué photo to be projected — somewhat blurrily — on to a public gallery wall inside one of several changing digital photo frames.

It sounds perverted, right?

But it was art.

And in the Museum of Desire — a limited-time exhibition currently showing in Collingwood — it wasn’t smutty.

Dimly lit, the museum consists of 20 main exhibits in various rooms. Photo by Bree Harding

The line between erotic art and pornography is possibly too faint for some to see, so I will say this exhibition is not for everyone, especially not children.

I visited with a friend on child-free weekend in the city.

When I’m sans children, I like to engage in activities that are reserved just for us big kids; like concerts held at adults-only venues, events or experiences that are often paired with booze such as wine tours, ice bars and groove trams, or activities my kids are not particularly interested in doing, such as making perfume and visiting art galleries.

Fantasy and desire were the themes of this exhibition. Photo by Bree Harding

Although, I’m sure being three teenage boys, if I told them what kind of art gallery I was visiting on the weekend, they possibly would’ve been a little more curious about joining me, especially for the giggle factor.

I, however, would’ve no doubt been exhausted trying to explain several of the exhibition’s installations to them.

Helping me to avoid the guilt about not even extending them an invitation, this venue is for over-18s anyway.

The themes of desire and fantasy inside this unique and interactive space were delivered with class.

Even though my friend and I also did our fair share of giggling, we could appreciate the collection for its individuality and artistic nuance.

Not everything inside was what some might label deviant.

Infinity rooms are always a groovy experience. Photo by Bree Harding

There was an infinity room lined with mirrors, projecting imagery that may have been erotic, but may also not have seemed so had it been anywhere else but inside that particular museum.

When pulse-reading sensors merged two heartbeats, it activated a rhythm of lights and speakers in the room. Photo by Bree Harding

There was also a room where, when a pair of people placed a single pointer finger each on a sensor, it read their pulses and merged their heartbeats together, triggering a spider-web of strip lighting above and beating sound symphony whimsically through stereo speakers all around to the rhythm.

There were laser lights that activated sensual noises and different digital projections on a wall beyond when you broke the beams with your hands.

Phone booths allowed people to step inside and listen to recordings mimicking (or mocking) adult hotlines in an amusing installation at the exhibition. Photo by Bree Harding

In the more tame and amusing areas of the space, there was a boob pit (think ball pit, but breast-shaped stress-ball-looking things), old London-style photo booths plastered with advertisements for adult hotlines that played amusing recordings when you held the phones’ handpieces to your ears and a phallic-shaped seating area on which to put some rest to the test(icle).

My friend and I sat in a booth and played a digitised ‘never have I ever’ game with what was perhaps an even spicier theme than the original intended.

In turn, we learned some interesting new things about each other.

We compared answers to ‘never have I ever’ prompts on iPads in a booth inside the museum. Photo by Bree Harding

A theatre at the centre of the museum played three short films on loop.

Cinematic art, not pornographic, if that’s what crossed your mind there.

In among all of this, there were sculptures and paintings, drawings and samples, vintage film promo posters, preserved ‘tools of the trade’, digital art, robots, games, photo booths.

I’m not a prude, but I’m not the most overtly liberal human in a public space either.

I didn’t find this museum shocking, nor did I feel shame about being inside it.

If you appreciate art, I don’t think you will either.

My only advice if you head down to take it all in: go with an open mind.